Transfer Students

After you have completed coursework at your previous institution, be sure to send copies of your final transcripts to the Registrar’s Office. You will then receive an official “Statement of Transfer Credit” to your L&C email with information about the credits that have transferred and which L&C General Education requirements you have already fulfilled (depending on your previous coursework, there might be some GE requirements that you will need to complete). If you have questions about the process or about how your previous coursework is evaluated by the Registrar, read more about Transfer Credit or contact the Registrar’s office directly.

After the Registrar’s office has verified that a course is transferable in general, you can start working with your Faculty Advisor, who will be the department chair in your prospective major, to determine if any of your previous college coursework courses can be applied to that department’s major requirements.

Students must complete at least 60-semester credits at L&C out of the 128 semester credits required for graduation, which means that students can transfer in a maximum of 68 credits.

If you have completed more than 68 credits elsewhere, consult with your Faculty or College Advisor, as well as your assigned Degree Audit & Transfer Credit Specialist in the Registrar’s Office to determine which credits could be most useful to your L&C degree.

L&C has a senior residency requirement, which states that after you have reached senior status (93 credits), only 4 credits of transfer coursework may be applied to the degree, which is included in the 68 transfer credit maximum.

Creating an academic plan with the help of your Faculty Advisor can help ensure you stay on track for graduation. 

You will have two advisors at L&C: a Faculty Advisor, who is typically the chair of the department of your likely major, and a College Advisor. Prior to the start of the fall semester, department chairs can help determine which courses taken at other institutions can be applied to requirements in the major here. After the fall semester has begun, students may change to another faculty advisor at any time.

Not yet. We will match you with a Faculty Advisor in your likely major department. In order to officially declare your major, you must fill out a Declaration of Major or Minor Form and turn it in to the Registrar’s Office.

If you are transferring in more than 45 credits, you must declare your major before you can register for fall semester courses.

Lewis & Clark is committed to serving the needs of our students with disabilities and learning differences. Professional staff in the Office of Student Accessibility are available to ensure that students receive all of the benefits of a comprehensive selection of services, including advice on academic strategies for success.

The Office of Student Accessibility is also available over the summer to help with any kind of accommodations related to learning, physical, or psychological needs.

We recommend taking 15 to 17 credits, which roughly means registering for four academic classes: one or two courses that explore possible majors, something new and interesting, and one or two courses that fulfill General Education requirements, depending on the evaluation of your previous coursework. Be sure to check out advice for Music and prospective STEM or Environmental Studies majors if you are considering studying one of those fields.

A typical load for Lewis & Clark students is four, 4-credit classes each semester. However, some students take 17 or 18 credits per semester if they are taking a lab science and/or activities, while some students will have 12 or 13 credits if they have been advised to allow themselves extra time to adjust to the academic expectations here. 12 credits is the lowest you can go to be a full-time student, so one nice thing about registering for 16 is that you have a little bit of a buffer to withdraw from a class during the add/drop period (the first two weeks of the fall semester) if you feel overwhelmed.

How many credits transfer students take each semester may depend on the number of credits you have completed, and the number of semesters you plan to be at L&C. Creating an academic plan with the help of your Faculty or College Advisor can help ensure you are making good progress on all of your degree and credit requirements.

You may not take more than 19 credits in your first semester. Give yourself time to become acquainted with campus, adjust to the expectations in your courses, and get involved in the Lewis & Clark community.

Many professors expect you will spend two or three hours on average outside of class for every hour you spend in class. Different types of work are challenging for different students and the workload in any course may vary from week to week. Nonetheless, most students find they need to devote more time to study outside of class than what they were accustomed to doing in high school.

The College Advising Center can help you decide what load is right for you. The Office of Student Accessibility is another good source of advice for students with learning differences.

As you prepare to register, it is important to have a list of backup courses, so that if a particular course is full when you are ready to register, you will have another course in mind. It is also useful to have backup courses so that you have a few different schedule options in case some of the courses you are interested in are offered at the same time.

We recommend having a list of 4 to 6 backup classes. Your backup list can be comprised of other courses to consider within majors or minors you are interested in exploring, classes that fulfill General Education requirements, or classes that allow you to try out something completely new and different. You also might want to consider registering for one of these hidden gems.

If you are having trouble crafting your schedule or finding backups, please contact your Faculty Advisor for assistance.

General Education courses provide a foundation for learning at a liberal arts college. These classes can expand your perspectives and skills, and expose you to the fine arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. Lewis & Clark College’s General Education requirements consist of the following:

• First-year student core courses (Core 120: Words and Core 121: Numbers)
  NOTE: Transfer Students are not required to take Core 120 or Core 121
• World language course(s) taken through the 201 level
• A bibliographic research in writing course
• A global perspectives course
• A historical perspectives course
• A culture, power, and identity course
• A natural sciences course
• Four credits in creative arts
• Two credits (taken in separate semesters) of physical education and well-being.

The “Statement of Transfer Credit” email you receive from the Registrar’s office will include information about which previous college courses you’ve completed can be applied to L&C’s General Education requirements.

The requirements and courses that fulfill them are listed in the College Catalog under General Education Requirements.

This short video provides a useful overview of General Education requirements, too.

The requirements and courses that fulfill them are listed in the College Catalog under General Education Requirements. However, not all courses are offered every semester. To find out which GE courses will be offered this spring:

1. Go to WebAdvisor.
2. Login using your WebAdvisor User ID and password. Select the Students menu.
3. Under the Registration heading, select Search for Sections.
4. From the Term drop-down menu, select CAS - Fall 2024.
5. Narrow your search to GE courses by clicking on the Course Type field (in the lower right) and selecting, for example, CAS-GE CREATIVE ARTS. This will show you all courses offered at L&C in the fall that fulfill that GE requirement (you can click on a Course Title on the next page to see the prerequisites).
6. Click Submit.

Students often assume that they need to finish all of their General Education requirements right away, but that’s not necessarily true. As long as you continue to make steady progress on the requirements, so that they are not all left for the end of your time at L&C, you’ll be fine. Creating an academic plan with the help of your Faculty or College Advisor can help ensure you are making good progress on all of your degree requirements. 

Transfer students are not required to take Core 120 or Core 121.

Lewis & Clark College requires all students to take a Natural Science course for general education, and the majority of courses students may take to fulfill this requirement have an algebraic proficiency prerequisite. Before registration, we recommend that transfer students who have not previously done college-level math work take the ALEKS Mathematical Placement in order to meet this prerequisite unless one of the following applies:

• You have an AP Calculus AB or BC score of 4 or 5
• You have an IB Mathematics Higher Level score of 5, 6, or 7
• You have college-level math transfer credit that the Registrar’s Office has deemed equivalent
• You have already completed the Natural Science requirement via transfer credit or qualifying AP/IB credit and do not plan to enroll in further Computer Science, Math, or Science courses.

For more information, visit our advice on Placement Exams to learn more about ALEKS Mathematics Placement.

Maybe. L&C requires students to gain intermediate-level proficiency (by completing SPAN 201: Intermediate Spanish I, for example) in a world language, and offers courses in Arabic, Chinese, Classical Greek, French, German, Japanese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish. The Statement of Transfer Credit you received from the Registrar’s Office will let you know if you have met our World Language General Education requirement.

To begin a new language study at L&C, you should register for a language at the 101: Beginning I (e.g. SPAN 101: Beginning Spanish I) level in your first semester. In the spring, you can continue language study at the 102: Beginning II level, and complete the World Language requirement by taking 201: Intermediate I in the fall of the next year.

Certain languages only offer 101 courses in the fall, 102 courses in the spring, and so on. If you would like to undertake study in a language in which the 101 course is not offered in the spring, be sure to register for that 101 course in the fall.

If you take the exam and place into 202 or higher, you will satisfy the World Language requirement via the exam. If you wish to continue studying in that language, you may register for the course you place into if you would like. However, you will need to take a proctored exam before taking the advanced class to confirm your placement.

For students that have previously done college-level language study, your Transfer Equivalency Report will show if you have completed world language courses that are equivalent to our 101, 102, 201, etc. course. If this is the case, you can register for the next level of the language without taking the World Language Placement exam (for example, if your Transfer Equivalency Report shows that you are transferring to a class that is equivalent to SPAN 101: Beginning Spanish I, you may register for SPAN 102: Beginning Spanish II).

For further information, please consult our advice on Placement Exams to learn more about the World Language Placement exams.

The Registrar’s Office evaluation of transfer students’ previous college coursework is based on the other institution’s course descriptions, along with other criteria outlined in the Transfer Credit section of L&C’s College Catalog.

After you have received your Statement of Transfer Credit from the Registrar and noted which General Education requirements you have fulfilled, you may think that you have taken a course that should fulfill one of L&C’s General Education requirements. If this is the case, you can submit additional information (such as a syllabus or assignments from the course) about the course to your Transfer Credit Specialist in the Registrar’s Office for re-evaluation. A syllabus may include information about expository writing assignments or lab work you completed in a previous course that is not detailed in a course description.

Alternatively, you may have received general credit for a previous course from the Registrar and believe it may fulfill a requirement in a major you plan to pursue at L&C. In that instance, you can consult with the chair of that department to determine if previous coursework you took can be applied to the major here (she or he will likely need to see course syllabi). Once you have officially declared your major, you can then submit Course Substitution forms to the Registrar’s Office to ensure those courses are being properly applied to your major.

To create your L&C email address, follow these steps from Information Technology (IT): Account Creation - Step by Step Guide.

You will use your L&C username (i.e. lc24-xxxx) to set up an email alias (nameyouchoose@lclark.edu) in WebAdvisor. This is a secondary email address on your Google account. You will use your L&C username (lc24-xxxx) to log into most college systems and services, including WebAdvisor, Moodle, and wifi access points. You will also select a password. This password will be used for all the systems listed above, including Gmail.

To log into your L&C email, go to gmail.com and enter your username followed by @lclark.edu (i.e. lc24-xxxx@lclark.edu) and password. The email alias (nameyouchoose@lclark.edu) you created will become your default “From:” address when composing new messages and will be the email everyone at L&C will use to contact you.

If you are having issues with your password, follow these directions to reset your password.

If students submit a chosen name form and wish to update their email alias, please contact the IT Helpdesk at ITservice@lclark.edu or 503-267-7225

Still having problems? Please get in touch with IT for more help

L&C supports the use of chosen names for students. It is the policy of the College to use a person’s chosen name to the greatest extent practicable and permissible.

Students who wish to record a chosen name or preferred pronoun should carefully review the policy and information about using a chosen name before submitting CAS Chosen Name form

Chosen name can be displayed in the following areas:

• Class rosters in WebAdvisor
• Grade rosters
• Moodle: Moodle will update automatically, one day after updating through the process described above.
• Email: If students submit a chosen name form and wish to update their email alias, please contact the IT Helpdesk at ITservice@lclark.edu

You can find more information on the Office of Equity and Inclusion’s website.

Lewis & Clark is committed to serving the needs of our students with disabilities and learning differences. Professional staff in the Office of Student Accessibility are available to ensure that students receive all of the benefits of a comprehensive selection of services, including advice on academic strategies for success.

Please consult OSA’s advice for incoming students to discuss academic and residential accommodations.

Campus Living encourages transfer and incoming students to begin the housing accommodation process with OSA by June 17, 2024.

The texts and materials you’ll need for each of your classes will be listed on the syllabus, which you’ll receive in class. However, you don’t have to wait to get the syllabus to find out what you’ll need for each class. If you visit the L&C’s College Bookstore, select the “Textbooks” link, and then choose either Start Comparison Shopping or Shop Bookstore Only. You can then select the Campus Term (L-C Bookstore CAS 2024 Fall), and choose the specific department, class, and section to see what your professors are requiring or recommending you have for that class.

The L&C Bookstore provides information about the exact textbooks and editions that your professors want you to have for their course. These books are available to purchase online or at L&C’s Bookstore, or you can try the Textbook Price Comparison Tool to view the L&C Bookstore prices alongside those from Amazon, Half.com, and others (book rentals are another good option).

Final pricing, rental titles, and the ability to place orders via our website are available beginning approximately four weeks prior to the start of the semester.

Keep in mind that your book list may change, depending on any changes you make to your schedule during the first two weeks of the semester, which is the add/drop period.

Please contact your advisor in the College Advising Center or make an appointment.